The news is filled with stories of people who make the most atrocious parenting decisions.And it’s easy to make fun of them. But every once in a while there’s a story that makes me sit up and wonder whether I’d have the courage to do the same thing.

Sue Lewis is a mom in the UK whose 24-year old son confessed to her that he’d been involved in a murder. “As a mother I wanted to protect my son — I’d have done anything for him,” she said in an interview in The Sun newspaper. Lewis’ son, Jimi, and some friends killed a young man they thought had slept with Jimi’s girlfriend.

“I felt sick — my own flesh and blood, capable of such a horrific murder…,” she said. “I was carrying the weight of knowing what Jimi had done and I knew I had an impossible decision to make.” Her decision? To report her son to the police.